Welcome to the Painting Challenge. Here you will find the fabulous, fevered work from miniature painters from around the world. While participants come from every colour, gender, age and nationality, they have at least three things in common: they love miniatures, enjoy a supportive community and they have all taken the Challenge.
This site features the current year's event along with the archives of past Challenges.
Enjoy your visit and remember to come back soon.

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Sunday, 1 January 2017

Now that I've cleared a bunch of riff-raff off the table I can start on some decent sized chunks of stuff for ongoing projects. First up is some new recruits for the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Coburn und Bucholz, my imaginary 18th century nation state.

These are all 28mm Front Rank Miniatures from their Austrian Seven Years War line. I absolutely love painting them as they have wonderful, clear detail and a combination of character and semi-static pose that's perfect for 18th century gaming.

One of the things I really enjoy about our Imaginations project is that there are absolutely no rules when it comes to uniforms. You are only limited by what you mind can conjure up and for me that means at least in some cases the more eye-watering the colour combination the better!

These stout fellow will do service as brigade or battery commanders on the table when Evan and I next face off. Given the amount of buttons, lace and other decoration they're an inefficient way to earn 50 points but I really enjoyed them and that's the main thing.

Cheers,Millsy

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Efficency be damned, miniatures like these demand to be painted, displayed and enjoyed! Lovely work, Millsy. I'm not crazy about Front Rank for Napoleonics (my hang up with their well-fed sculpts), but they absolutely sing for Lace-Wars, and these don't disappoint. I'm particularly taken with the mounted officer in yellow with blue facings. Gorgeous colour combo there.

I present 8 early crusader foot troops and a fired-up priest! These miniatures are all from Gripping Beast and will take the field as part of my Milites Christi war-band for SAGA. Eventually I hope to have enough extra troops that I can field them to play Lion Rampant as well.

I have painted them up in the colours of the Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, or Knights Hospitaller. I chose this order as I fell in love with the pictures of these guys in the SAGA rule book. I think it is such a striking scheme, if perhaps a tad impractical in the desert heat. They are obviously early crusaders, and would have served from after the fall of Jerusalem in 1099. The order changed colours in 1259 and started wearing red with a white cross, but my guys won't be getting the new issue uniform any time soon!

The shields were hand-painted as you can easily tell! It is quite difficult coming up with different ways to paint a cross on a shield, so a lot of my guys just have the large cross across the whole shield, as I think it looks best.

The miniatures were a treat to paint up, especially the priest. I actually started another box of these warriors in 2015, but due to my hobby butterfly tendencies (and the Painting Challenge), their brother-in-arms have been finished first.Have a great 2017 everyone!Cheers,Steve

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That is some gorgeous brush-work Steve! The hand-painted shields look ace and I agree with you, the priest is the star of the show (awesome work on the face). I'm starting these chaps for a later period and your efforts are acting as a wonderful inspiration.

Again, please refer to the participant roster
below to find your submission day, your Minion and your stated points target. Remember, you can submit your entries at any time but they will only be uploaded to the blog on your submission day.

Monday (Miles)

AdamC

1,500

AlexS

1,500

BrettM

1,000

ClintB

850

DaveD

2,500

EdwinK

500

JamesB

1,000

JohnSe

500

LeeH

500

MartinC

2,500

NickJ

500

PeterM

1,000

RayR

500

RodF

500

SidneyR

1,000

TamsinP

2,600

The Tribe of Bromley

500

Tuesday (AlanD & PaulOG)

AledC

500

AnthonyOM

500

Barks

1,000

BenF

400

BrendonW

750

ChristianH

700

EvanH

300

GregB

1,000

IsobelS

750

JameL

750

JohnS

500

MelS

750

PhilipK

500

ReillyOG

100

RosieD

200

RusselG

400

SeanM

400

Wednesday (ByronM)

AlexD

200

BillA

500

ChristopherS

500

DavidL

750

GuyB

400

IannickM

550

JasperO

400

JohnM

400

JuanM

500

KyleC

1,000

MichaelD

500

PaulS

750

RichardP

1,500

RossM

250

ScottM

750

StephenS

750

TeemuL

750

Thursday (DavidB)

AaronH

1,000

BenitoM

500

EthanM

1,500

IainW

500

JamesM

500

JezT

400

JimH

400

JonathanO

1,000

MarkW

750

MatsE

400

MichaelP

500

PeterD

800

RobertH

200

SamuliS

1,000

SimonM

500

StephenSe

523

TodR

400

Friday (PhilH & Sylvain)

AndrewB

300

ChristopherSm

500

EricM

2,500

GrahameH

1,000

IanW

750

JamesonP

400

KeithS

1,000

KenR

750

MartinN

600

MattT

400

MikeA

500

ReneA

750

RobH

500

SanderS

1,500

StefanK

500

SteveM

1,000

VictorK

500

Saturday (Curt)

AlanD

2,000

ByronM

1,000

DavidB

1,750

JamieM

1,000

MarkG

500

MichaelA

1,000

MilesR

2,000

Millsy

1,500

PaulOG

850

PhilH

200

SteveB

500

SylvainR

800

TomF

500

ValeryN

500

Please note: The Challenge usually has a crush of entries at the start and finish so, I will be
responsible for adjudicating the first few weeks and the last days of the
Challenge (December 20th to January 2nd and March 18th to 20th). Note: Those days will be 'free-fire' periods where you can post as much as you like on whatever day you want.

Posting Style Guide

This was a great suggestion from Tamsin (Thanks Ms. P!).

Here is a suggested 'style guide' for your submissions:

1) The title of your post should include: Submission Day (i.e. 'For Monday'), Your Name, Title of Submission, and indication that it is ready for submission.

2) The body of your post should include a summary of the figures in the entry, scale(s), numbers of figures, any scratchbuilding, half-figures or prone figures etc.

3) Text in Helvetica, images scaled to 800 pixels across the top and set to 'Large' in the post. Please do not create your post in a word processing program and paste into the blog template - it 'poisons' the formatting and makes it difficult to edit.

Theme Rounds

For the Fortnight Bonus Theme Rounds you can submit your post in one of two ways:

1) Simply write up your submission as usual in the Challenge Blog. In the title mark it clearly as for a Theme round. Please don't peek at others' submissions as they should be a surprise. I will then copy them over to the Theme page when the day arrives.

2) You can send your submission to me as an email. I will then copy them into the Theme page. This is a bit more fiddly for me but I understand if people want to make sure their submission is kept under wraps until the Big Reveal.

For those who have not made a submission yet I remind you that the deadline for the Challenge Cut is 11:59pm, January 20th. Those without a submission by that time will be removed from the roster and no submissions will be accepted after that date. No negotiations. This is a Hard Deadline.

Okay, there it is! I have a few entries to post today, but tomorrow we start with Miles our Monday Minion and Spreadsheet Walla!